Publications - Military Families

“The VA National Suicide Data Report for 2005 to 2016, which came out in September 2018, highlights an alarming rise in suicides among veterans age 18 to 34 — 45 per 100,000 veterans. Younger veterans have the highest rate of suicide among veterans, but those 55 and older still represent the largest number of suicides.
Moreover, the suicide rate for older veterans is higher than that of non-veterans. For veterans age 55 to 74 years old, the rate of suicide is 26 per 100,000, while nationally, the suicide rate in the same age group is 17.4 per 100,000. The rate ticks up even higher for veterans over 85 years old.
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“Military service members who are at risk for suicide may be less likely to attempt to harm themselves when they receive supportive text messages, a U.S. study suggests.
Soldiers in the study had all received behavioral health services for considering or attempting suicide in the past, and all were on active duty, in the Reserve or in the National Guard. They all received standard treatments like medication or psychotherapy as needed; half of the 650 participants were also randomly assigned to received occasional texts with messages like “hope you’re having a good day.”
Over the course of a year, people who received these texts were 44 percent less likely to experience suicidal thoughts and 48 percent less likely to attempt suicide than those who didn’t get the messages.
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“Soldiers who have insomnia before deployment may be more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or experience suicidal thoughts than service members who don’t struggle to sleep before they deploy, a U.S. study suggests.
For the study, researchers surveyed U.S. Army soldiers one to two months before they deployed to Afghanistan in 2012, right after they returned from deployment, and again three months and nine months later.
Soldiers who experienced insomnia in the 30 days prior to deployment were more than three times more likely to experience PTSD and more than twice as likely to have suicidal thoughts after their return than peers who didn’t have sleep difficulties at the start of the study.
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“Research has shown that childhood experiences, both positive and negative, have a significant impact on lifelong health and well-being. A major study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente surveyed more than 17,000 Americans to gain a better understanding of how adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, such as divorce, child abuse, neglect, or household dysfunction, might impact individuals as adults. The researchers found that adverse childhood experiences are very common in the general population. Fortunately, a positive figure in a child’s life can help to provide stability and security while also reducing the destructive effects of toxic stress. One of the critical roles of the military community is to raise healthy, resilient children despite the stressors and challenges they face. Service members and their families can take advantage of several support systems in place for parents and children alike.
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“Many veterans and active-duty service members use psychiatric service dogs to help alleviate the everyday challenges of PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury and Military Sexual Trauma — conditions that service dog advocates call "invisible injuries." Now, the service dog community is eyeing a dog certification system to streamline travel and leisure for veterans who, like Crowell, are frustrated with the arduous process and stigmas attached to taking trips.
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“Guilt is a feeling of responsibility for bad events, whether that feeling is realistic or not. Some Veterans feel guilt or remorse because of something that happened in their military experience, such as an injury to a buddy in their unit, friendly fire, or civilian deaths. Survivor guilt can include feeling guilty about surviving when others did not, wishing that you had died instead of others, or thinking you didn’t deserve to survive. Identifying productive ways to act on regrets — finding a way to pay tribute to the fallen, for example — can help you find peace with past events. Seeking treatment and opening up about the past can help you get back to living a fulfilling life.
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“The suicide rate for female veterans has soared 85 percent in recent years, leading the military, VA and advocacy groups to try new ways to improve women's mental health care during and after service. One key focus: how to tailor the sometimes tricky jump from the military to the civilian world. Women's experiences in the military are different from men's, so their transition needs to be different, too, said retired Army Col. Ellen Haring, director of research for the advocacy group Service Women's Action Network (SWAN). "The experiences you have on active duty carry with you, and then they manifest as mental wellness challenges as veterans," she said. "When you're transitioning out of the service, or when you return from a combat deployment to come back to a stateside demobilization and try to return to family or community, that's a challenging period." When that transition doesn't go well, the cost can be terrible. Female veterans are nearly 250 percent more likely to kill themselves than civilian women.
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“Mental health support can come in many forms. Whether treatment involves one-on-one counseling, support groups, or other forms of treatment such as medication, there are many paths to a stronger you. In addition to getting treatment, making simple adjustments to your routine or lifestyle — such as pursuing a passion or getting involved in the community — can be fulfilling. Whether you are already receiving professional treatment or are simply looking for enrichment, these six sources of support can be helpful additions to your mental health routine. Sometimes the most effective treatments are the ones that you stumble across by chance.
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“Combining intensive psychotherapy with a pure form of the party drug ecstasy is safe and could aid recovery in people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to the findings of a study in military veterans. Scientists who conducted the research - a small study involving just 26 people - said its results suggested that with close medical and psychological supervision, giving MDMA to PTSD patients 'could enhance the benefits of psychotherapy.'
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“Both men and women have faced the effects of military sexual trauma, including sexual assault, harassment, or unwanted sexual attention. Such traumatic experiences can negatively affect Veterans for years. This April marks Sexual Assault Awareness Month. It’s a time to continue the national conversation about sexual assault. It’s also a time to build awareness about ways to support those who have had traumatic experiences.
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“This idea of going beyond prescriptions — and especially beyond opioids — in dealing with different sorts of pain and trauma has become a focus of the VA nationally. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has given $120,000 in grant money to Guo to spread his special wheelchair tai chi curriculum. In addition to making a vet feel better physically, the VA also hopes these alternative therapies might help ease symptoms of conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder. Guo, a medical anthropologist at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, has modified his tai chi to work from a seated position. Even though many of the participants aren't in wheelchairs, using the mobile chairs makes it easier for them to get through a half-hour of movement.
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“Every military family will have a different set of challenges when experiencing deployments. Likewise, each member of a military family will have different reactions based on their unique placement in the family. Experts have studied the cycle of emotions military families encounter during deployment and have found certain emotional characteristics can be identified through different phases throughout each deployment.
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“Within Army units, the risk of suicide attempts among soldiers increases as the number of attempts made within the past year in their unit rises, according to the study, published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry on Wednesday. In other words, the greater the number of previous suicide attempts in a unit, the greater the individual risk of a suicide attempt for a soldier in that unit, said Dr. Robert Ursano, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience and director of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress at the Department of Defense's Uniformed Services University...The study involved data on 9,512 enlisted soldiers who attempted suicide between 2004 and 2009, documented in administrative and medical records...After analyzing the data, the researchers found that soldiers were more likely to attempt suicide if assigned to a unit with one or more previous suicide attempts in the past year, and that risk increased as the number of previous suicide attempts went up.
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“As meditation-based treatments have gained popularity, many practitioners and researchers are incorporating them in the treatment of PTSD (Libby, Pilver, & Desai, 2012). Multiple types of meditation, which differ in philosophy and practice, have been applied clinically. This line of research is in its relative infancy, but initial evidence suggests that meditation-based approaches merit continued investigation to evaluate their efficacy, mechanisms, and implementation within Department of VeteransAffairs (VA) settings.
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Disclaimer: Material on the William James INTERFACE Referral Service website is intended as general information. It is not a recommendation for treatment, nor should it be considered medical or mental health advice. The William James INTERFACE Referral Service urges families to discuss all information and questions related to medical or mental health care with a health care professional.